The Once and Future King
by Vendelyn Silverhawk
Summary: Snow White AU, loosely. Steven and James, the Winter Prince and his Summer Boy, immovable, unable to exist without the other. Until, suddenly, they must, and long winters wipe away the past while the usurper Pierce claims the kingdom, and the Winter Soldier does not remember the boy called James. It is up to Steve to remind him, before the poison apple falls. Long live the king.


**A/N: This is just a drabble inspired by another fic, since snow white!Bucky seems to be a thing that won't get off my mind. :P**

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"Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls, what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves." ~ T.H. White _The Once and Future King_

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He was born on winter's last night, as the moon turned black and White Walkers howled, animals feeling the shadow of starvation wind between their bones. In the rib cages of starving wolves the flesh of royal guardsmen sat, for blood was spilled on the night of his birth.

Unnatural, they said, for wolves to be so daring.

Within the confines of castle ice, cold stone freezing next to weak torchlight, the queen's screams grew fainter and fainter. Winter sits in her body, the healer said gravely, in her womb. She and the child will not last the night.

Yet as the clouds crept away and the stars peaked out, another cry rang out- faint but strong. A son was born with winter in his heart, and on his snow-pale skin. Hair dark as night, and lips as red as the blood staining royal sheets, and eyes like witch's brood.

The king, shattered by the loss of his summer wife, refused to touch the child, or see it, or give it a name for the seven days he stayed in the arms of the wet nurse. So the queen was set afire on hard ice ground and her ashes scattered at the base of the mighty Hydra tree, its many branches piercing the sky before bursting into plumes of blood red flowers. And the son remained nameless in his father's grief, until his advisor took the child into his own hands- which shivered to touch him- and declared him a prince.

James.

"Beloved."

As the long winter passed and the sun thawed the ground, James grew, and left the arms of his wet nurse to venture outside the palace where his father's grief made him small and the advisor Pierce's shadow grew too long. So winter's child played, and hunted, but his skin stayed pale and his hair stayed dark, and the sun did not touch him until he met the stonemason's boy.

It was the eighth year of long summer, and the prince chafed against his fine tunics and stiff boots, instead favoring bare feet and trousers only as he explored his future kingdom. Just inside the gates of the palace he found the boy, skin like glass and hair bright as summer wheat, striking eyes bluer and clearer than the sky itself. Small hands not fit for hauling stone, but for chipping in designs of the greatest beauty.

For his courage facing the brute son of one of the palace knights, who believed it was his job to torment the daughter of the seamstress, the prince gave the stonemason's boy a precious gift: friendship. From that moment on they were inseparable, the Winter Prince and Summer Boy, who had a chill like no other in his chest. Once, when he stopped breathing on one of their adventures, the prince thought his friend had died.

"Steven!" he cried, clutching his friend's shoulders desperately as the golden-haired boy gasped for air. James' heart leapt when he heard the rasping intake of breath.

"I'm fine," Steven wheezed, but he didn't look it. Next to the strapping young prince, he looked to be on death's door, with his withered chest and thin shoulders, sunken cheeks crowned with golden hair.

"You have the Chill," James frowned- he had dragged Steven all over kingdom come on their silly adventures and never once had he said he was sick. Half of the trouble they got in to was because of him! For someone so small, Steven was quite a spitfire, and leapt to battle wherever an injustice was occurring, leaving James to drag him away like a rabid puppy.

"It's nothing," he insisted, shaking James off.

It wasn't, but James let it go and they returned to the castle together, parting at the gates. One for glittering rooms and a soft bed, the other to an orphan's lot, and the life of an apprentice sleeping at the foot of his master's bed.

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Years lengthened and summer waxed hot and bright, until the prince was grown into himself and the king grown used to weakness. James, handsome and roguish, chased maids and royalty alike, no young woman of the court safe from his quick wit and easy smile.

Of course, the only one who saw to the heart of him was Steven, ever a constant companion, ever stealing the prince's years with worry for health and foolhardy heroism. There was no time for maids when friendship and mischief called- none of them were honest, anyway, or good, or beautiful. Lambs, they were, in silk cloths with not an ounce of fire in their hearts.

Then summer waned, long black nights crept in, and the snake in the king's ear started to whisper. The advisor Pierce, fostering decades of influence and leeching power from a king driven to madness in grief, whispered, and poisonous were his words.

Before summer fades, should not the prince enjoy one last hunt? The future king, accompanied by court and hounds, must have his last of pleasure before winter brings its bite.

Deeper and deeper James rode, giddy with the thrill of hunting such an elusive creature as this massive boar. It had seemingly come from nowhere and promptly disappeared again, but where the court would falter James was bold. And, of course, accompanied by the finest men Pierce had offered. Safety for the once and future king.

The finest men ensured that the prince had no help when the boar charged, its tusk digging deep into flesh until his arm hung by threads and blood stained emerald grass. It grew brown at the edges with winter's coming, and soaked up the red in its last chance for color before white swallowed the world.

The finest men dragged the prince deeper, deeper, where shadows creep and sleeping wolves lie, stomachs fat and full but not for much longer.

Tears turned cold, as flesh turned to ashes. Summer wife gone, winter son reclaimed, weary husband and father scattered beneath the Hydra.

_The king is dead._

A new crown of red and silver sits easy on the head which bears it.

_Long live the king._

Pierce's shadow helps winter reclaim its prize.

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James stumbles, gasps, holds his dead limb to his body for the boar was unable to completely separate it, shredding sinew and muscle but not enough bone.

Steven will be waiting for the hunt to return, missing him.

His father will wander the halls like a madman, asking for his son.

_Pain_.

Step.

Gasp.

Sleeping wolves wake.

When he falls and the mountain takes his arm, ice closes over him and wolves skitter at rock's edge, howling death for their meal.

So the story goes; winter takes its prince, and he forgets.

Everything.

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Fair folk work the winter ice, find the prince, say that all of the pieces are not scattered beyond repair.

He remembers nothing but pain, the pain of fire and ice and iron where once was flesh and bone and blood. The smell of honey wine shoved deeper into his throat to muffle the screams. Engines of the union between magic and war crank on.

So the winter prince survives.

When he wakes, she says her name is Natasha.

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A princess disgraced for having the heart of a man, cast out for witchcraft strung in ruby hair.

She is meant for no man, and rumors of the spider's kiss follow her wherever she goes, this venomous princess unfit to rule.

She does not mind the red that follows her, creeping and flowing around her feet, rising to her ankles. One day she will drown in it and murdered parents, crying children, memories let burn and crumble, will have their vengeance.

She does not mind because she does not remember.

Because stories are stories are stories and those who hear of her do not live to spread the tales.

The Black Widow of Roul Rochev, master assassin, forgotten blue blood. Put to better use by new masters than parents who could not see past their daughter's unholy desire to wield a sword. She is a summer child with hair like fire and eyes like envy, and until the fair folk shielded her, she, too, had forgotten everything.

Almost.

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Steven is the only one who looked for James. His winter prince.

He cannot accept that the ashes are royal, that he will never again hear James call him a fool for picking fights he can't win, or hear him laugh at his own lewd humor. Watch him ruffle his hair and ask how he looks, because he knows he is handsome and has to hear Steven say it.

No one misses the sculptor, or the skinny white horse that goes with him, amid the festivities for the dead.

To be followed, of course, by a celebration for the new king.

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James feels the weight of the arm, magic sewn with metal, cogs and gears whirring as sleek silver fingers flip the knife and ponder how it would feel buried in someone's neck. Wonder if his blood would be warm enough for this new arm to feel. His skin is no longer beautiful like virgin snow, but sullied, and his dark hair falls in tangles past gaunt cheeks. Who now would say he is handsome? Steven would lie, say "handsome" rather than "haunted" no matter how many times James asks for the truth. But his lips are still red like blood, like summer apples, and beautiful.

And he does not remember his summer boy. His Steven with soft artist's hands and love of all things green, all things that need protection even though that was James' job more often than not. Who knew how long it would be until winter took him, too, and the chill in his chest grew to ice?

But that is a concern of the remembered, and James can neither be counted by them or among them, for ice takes all and his mind is as bare as the winter plains.

"They want nothing in return- it is their gift to repair, to bring life," Natasha murmurs, stilling the knife with a touch of her hand. She wears the tight cloths and draping blue cloak of the fair folk themselves, although she is human and they moved on without her. To warmer lands, she says, until the long years of winter receded at the sun's blazing touch.

James doesn't speak- hadn't spoken during those long days while the metal smiths worked, and Natasha fed him magic to dull the pain and keep his heart racing. Memory struggled beneath the ice of his mind- treachery, suspicion, lurked, at the thought of those fine knights leaving him to die, before those too were washed away by the snow.

"We all have sad stories here, but the forest protects us," Natasha says. "It took me a long time to reclaim my life, too."

But what life was there left to take back? His had been stolen, and to look for it would be death, only. Something within him told him that.

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Winter falls away, short, and it is followed by a shorter summer. Bare, scorching years where James and Natasha do what they do best. With steel and sword and arrow, all the infernal devices of the trade from which Natasha escaped, only to remake it into something better, something almost _good, _the Black Widow and her new companion traverse realms far beyond that of the treacherous usurper.

He doesn't know why, but the man now called the Winter Soldier, for lack of any other name in his arsenal- who is there who knows to call him James, but he who is far away, searching hopelessly, endlessly- does not like that kingdom. They avoid it, and Natasha does not ask why.

James would be horrified at what the Winter Soldier does.

Natasha flinches from the growing darkness in him, and tries to reconcile the growing darkness with tactile affection and soft words. It works, but only just. Sometimes Natasha wonders, curled around him in the dark, metal arm thrown over her sweat-sticky body as the summer breeze rolls over them, what he was like Before.

Someone who would still love her, she hopes.

Winter comes again, and they fall more deeply in love.

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No body but an arm, no proof of true conquest.

Suddenly the head that bears the crown finds itself uneasy.

"Insight!" he roars to the fair folk at his feet, their wrists bound with foul iron that spreads the scent of burning flesh throughout the room. It is too close to the smell of the fake ashes spread beneath the Hydra, and only fuels Pierce's suspicions.

"You can make it for me, something that will allow me to see as far as I desire," he hisses, kicking the dark-skinned folk viciously.

"As far in this winter world as you can imagine," the lighter one says, his face bloodied. Once it had been earnest and handsome, but the king's cruelty sullied it and soon would steal all life it holds to move those broken lips into a battered smile.

"Then build it, and your reward will be a painless death."

He lies, of course- both fair folk suffer greatly for their services, and do not rest easy until they are in the ground, their names passed through the mouth of each of their kin until the fair folk weep, and curse winter and its human king.

Staring through the domed glass, the king searches desperately for insight, gaze roaming all across the vastness of the white-cloaked realm in search of the winter prince. He almost starts to believe paranoia is simply that, but then the genius of the fair folk betrays them, and Pierce sees clearer than any ghost the living heir to his throne.

In his rage his orders search parties, but James has a new companion, fierce and quick, and together they elude or kill those sent for his life. Subtlety, then, and red lips grow pale as poison takes its toll.

Winter's prince with skin like snow and hair like night and lips as red as lifeblood returns to the ice, a poison apple rolling across the snow. Betrayal tastes sweet, and goes down his throat burning.

James lies dead in the looking glass, his companion fled like a snuffed candle, and smoke winds up and up until Pierce imagines it is from the pyre of the prince himself.

Before the body can be returned, however, his companion returns with fury like fire, a flood of rage and grief that dismantles each and every man sent to burn her love. The king sends more, not content until he watches the flesh burn before his own eyes.

Like the winter and summer before it, this winter is short, and after three years it burns itself to a quick and bitter end.

_"As far in this winter world as you can imagine."_

When the first snow thaws, the glass goes milky pale, and suddenly Pierce finds himself blind to the vastness of his realm. Shards litter the floor of his tower room as he curses the fair folk and their trickery, and he searches desperately for more, but as they travel back into the summer lands they skirt the king's realm to avoid his wrath and ruin.

So James is hidden from him.

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They find him at old Brookland, where once peaceful peasant folk lived and now lives the ruins of their lives, reclaimed by the forest beneath the ice.

"James," the knight murmurs as he sinks to his knees by the coffin, strong fingers pressing against the iron and ice and glass. No one had said that name in four seasons, two winters and summers short but fierce for it, and now the fair folk predicted that this thaw would last for ten years.

"Steve... There's nothing we can do," his comrade says, fingers brushing the magnificent bird of prey wrought in the pommel of his sword nervously as he surveys the open clearing. "We're too late."

"Don't say that," Steve snaps, breath fogging the glass. James looks older, but not much- the coffin preserves him and Steve aches to see those eyes open again. Even as a knight he never gave up his love for artistry, and in all the years of his search he never found the right color with which to render James' eyes.

"I know he means a lot to you, but... He doesn't look like he's coming back."

"I'm don't care. Just go, if you want to, Sam."

"No way," the dark-skinned man shakes his head. He strides over to the nearby well, overgrown with ivy and vines, and sets down his heavy traveling back, beginning to unbuckle his breastplate.

"I spent half of the past winter tracking him down with you- I'm not going anywhere except the tree line so I can stand guard."

Sam doesn't see Steve's barely-there smile as he walks away, sword drawn. Even after magic made him strong, and his pure heart earned him the body of a warrior after he rescued an elder of the fair folk from Pierce's men, he had not dreamed of companionship on his quest. But Sam... Good Sam, strong, humorous when needed and as jovial a companion as Steve could want. Someone with ghosts of his own, and willing steel lent in pursuit of the lost prince.

Leaning back against the coffin, Steve closes his eyes and tries not to let his tears show.

"Did you love him, too?" a soft voice asks. Steve opens his eyes slowly, takes in the woman with hair like flame and movement like a snow cat crouching in front of him. He wonders how she got past Sam.

"Yes."

"More than your own life?" There is pain in her eyes, unimaginable grief but for one who has felt it also.

"Till the end of time."

"Then maybe you can do what I can't." She straightens, and Steve notices the glowing blue of her cloak, emblazoned with the shield of the fair folk although she is certainly human. When she trails her fingers across the coffin it is with a ghost of tenderness, as though she expects skin rather than glass to respond to her touch.

"He was poisoned," she says. Her palm spreads flat across the glass above his chest, his heart. "With Hydra flours, put in an apple."

Steve's heart kick-starts, and he rises with shock and hope written across his face, in his blue sky eyes that he can't know Bucky dreams of even then.

"Then he isn't dead," Steve says. He is already working the coffin latches, to which ice still clings stubbornly. The woman's hands stop him.

"Nearly. I couldn't... I couldn't wake him- someone took my heart long ago, and there isn't enough left in me to break a curse life this. I tried… but I'm not good, I'm not pure. Maybe you are," she says, and Steve sees the love in her eyes as clearly as he saw James', so long ago. A different kind of love, but there nonetheless.

"I'll try," Steve says. With a mighty groan he pushes the lid back, ignoring it as it shatters against the ground. And there... There lies his winter prince.

When Steve's lips fall tender and sweet on his forehead, life floods the body of his once and future king. Red returns to his lips and cheeks, and eyes like the winter sky behold the face of a friend so changed, and so familiar.

"James," Steve breaths.

Knife in hand, the winter prince stumbles up and back, metal arm whirring, face a mask of fear and hatred. Hydra flowers eat memory like snow sucks the life of the earth, and ice numbs what is living so completely that oblivion seems preferable to pain.

But those eyes and gentle hands... They are familiar in the most painful, the most wonderful of ways. The winter prince swallows, images of a frail man dancing over his view of this broad-shouldered giant.

"That was my name once," he murmurs. "James..."

"Yes," Steve says. "I'm-"

"Steven," James says, chest faltering as he breathes in summer air. "Natasha."

"I'm here," the woman says, hovering behind Steve with one hand outstretched falteringly.

"We're both here," Steve says, and James falls forward into his arms, forehead pressed against his shoulder as the weight of memory and of four seasons lost crashes around him.

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For all her sincerity, Natasha's heart is shattered beyond repair- it will never break a curse, or bring the dead back to life, or power magic needed to save a life. But what little of it she has, she has given gladly.

For all his courage, James' spirit is crushed under the weight of remembering, and he knows in his heart that he will never be good enough for a crown.

Even as Pierce's head rolls to the floor of the throne room with a dull _thud_, all of them know that nothing will be as it was.

The crown is cold in James' hands as he lifts it, smiling softly at Sam, honest and true in the fight to regain the kingdom, and Steve. He knows he will never be good enough to be king.

_The usurper is dead. _

_ Long live the king. _

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So his Summer Boy became King, and the realm experienced the longest summer in recorded history- thirty years of Steve and his new group of knights, named the Shield of the Realm in honor of the fair folk and led by Sam, keeping the peace. Natasha finally knew the name of her Winter Soldier, and together they shed the guises of their darkest years in favor golden wheat fields and the taste of fresh strawberries on their tongues.

They will never forget, but they have forgiven, and through the long summer and the long winter that follows more stories are told.

Of the Winter Prince and his Summer Boy.

Of the Widow and the Soldier.

Of the freedom fighters who toppled a tyrant.

Of James, and Steve, and a coffin made of glass and an apple red as blood.

Of love as pure and clear as the summer sky.

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_Review!_


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